Bags & Shoppers
Fair Trade : Fair Travel
Fair Travel means respecting your hosts, valuing their culture, caring about their environment, and ensuring that the material and intangible benefits of your travel are shared with local communities.
Fair Trade, too, is based on respect and mutual benefits. The local society, culture and environment are central to fairtrade considerations.
New Internationalist offers a range of backpacks, bags and wallets to support your fair travel experience.
Environmentally friendly products
- Hemp, one of the oldest plants used by people for paper, clothing, ropes, canvas, and shelter, requires little or no fertilisers or pesticides to grow successfully.
- Allo, the giant nettle, grows wild on the Himalayas and does not need fertilisers or pesticides. The wild nettles are harvested after the rainy season, and regrow before the next rains thus preventing erosion on the steep slopes.
- Organic cotton, grown without pesticides and processed without other nasties.
- Jute, or hessian, is a fast growing, rainfed crop. Jute production supports many village communities across India, Bangladesh and Thailand. Jute plants are noted for their ability to absorb greenhouse gases – one hectare can consume around 15 tons of CO2 over a growing season.
About plastic bags
- Four to five trillion plastic bags are manufactured each year around the world
- In 2007, Australians used 3.9 billion checkout-style plastic bags
- Plastic bags are produced from polymers derived from petroleum. The amount of petroleum used to make a plastic bag would drive a car about 11 metres
- Production contributes to air pollution and energy consumption
- It takes 1,000 years for traditional polyethylene bags to break down
- Plastic bags choke landfills and are carried by the wind into forests, rivers, lakes and the sea
- 1 billion seabirds and mammals die per year by ingesting plastic bags
In October 2008, South Australia banned checkout-style plastic bags. That's 400 million less bags each year polluting our land, rivers and sea. You, too, can embrace the advance against plastic bags pollution – say no to plastic bags and choose
environmentally friendly shopping bags.
(Source: www.environment.gov.au)
The Bag Women
In Bangladesh, widows and abandoned wives receive training at Action Bags. They are then supported to establish their own small businesses sewing environmentally friendly jute bags.
The Sana Hastakala organisation fosters a resurgence of traditional craft skills for underprivileged craft producers throughout Nepal, assisting women to earn a livelihood by weaving nettle fibres.
Ruth y Nohemi, a weaving cooperative in Guatemala, was founded as a way for women to organize and market their handicrafts. Through the project the women are able to ensure the survival of their families, their village and their culture.
Try the mobile version
New Internationalist
